Risk I/O Wraps Up $5.25M Series A

Risk I/O, maker of a vulnerability intelligence platform, has raised $5.25 million in a Series A round led by U.S. Venture Partners. Tugboat Ventures and Greg Sands’ Costanoa Venture Capital also contributed. As a result, USVP partner Jacques Benkoski joins the company’s board. The company is based in Chicago.

PRESS RELEASERisk I/O, the first vulnerability intelligence platform, today announced that it has closed a $5.25 million Series A funding round led by U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), with participation from Tugboat Ventures and Greg Sands’ Costanoa Venture Capital. USVP partner Jacques Benkoski, Ph.D. will join the Board of Directors. The company will use the funding to accelerate product innovation as well as expand sales and marketing to meet increasing demand from enterprise users. To date, Risk I/O has processed over 6 million security vulnerabilities via its SaaS platform, and over 400 businesses, including many in the Fortune 100, use Risk I/O for vulnerability intelligence.

“Security professionals are faced with a sea of noise when it comes to security data generated by their numerous, disparate assessment tools. It is incredibly difficult to manually aggregate, mine and prioritize vulnerability data from these tools, and companies are often left exposed to attack for far too long,” said Ed Bellis, Risk I/O Cofounder & CEO. “I cofounded Risk I/O after experiencing this challenge first-hand as the CISO of Orbitz with the hope of making it easier for security teams to quickly identify and remediate high-risk vulnerabilities and improve their overall security posture.”

According to research from analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates, almost half of all enterprises surveyed are overwhelmed by the amount of security data they collect, and even more feel they have insufficient time or expertise to analyze that data. The vast majority of respondents said they would collect more security-related data if they could make sense of it.1

Risk I/O is the first vulnerability intelligence platform to provide:

Aggregation: Risk I/O aggregates and prioritizes vulnerability data collected from over 20 of the most widely-deployed security assessment tools — including Qualys, Rapid7, HP, IBM and others — in a single dashboard to provide a centralized view of an organization’s security posture and enable the quick identification and remediation of high-risk vulnerabilities.

Precognition: Risk I/O leverages a combination of sophisticated predictive, big data analytics technologies to compare a company’s own vulnerability data against that of thousands of others, as well as contextual data such as publicly available exploit information, to foresee where a business is most likely to be attacked.

“Risk I/O is the first company to tackle the big data problem that plagues the information security market. The explosion of cyber attacks against businesses today combined with the variety of security assessment tools in use has left CISOs with an increasingly uncontrollable vulnerability management problem,” said Jacques Benkoski, Venture Partner at USVP. “With its SaaS-based solution, Risk I/O offers deep insight and sophisticated intelligence into an organization’s risk posture, enabling faster, smarter vulnerability remediation and better overall protection. The power of its analytics platform and the visibility offered by the large community Risk I/O has built has led to rapid adoption by Fortune 100 companies and more.”

“Security holes are everywhere — in applications, networks, databases, you name it. Risk I/O is the only vulnerability intelligence platform to aggregate and prioritize all vulnerability data no matter which assessment technologies a company is using. It sits above the fray to help companies make sense of the flood of security issues they ingest on a daily basis,” said Jeremiah Grossman, Founder and CTO of WhiteHat Security and advisor to Risk I/O. “The analytics behind Risk I/O’s precognition capabilities — and the ability to foresee potential breaches — are a first of their kind and make Risk I/O a powerful tool for any security organization.”

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About Risk I/O
Risk I/O is the first vulnerability intelligence platform. Delivered via SaaS, Risk I/O aggregates and prioritizes vulnerability data from over 20 of the most widely-deployed security assessment technologies to provide enterprises with a single view of their security risk. By integrating with the top bug fix and ticketing systems, Risk I/O enables organizations to collaborate on vulnerability remediation. Its precognition capabilities leverage predictive, big data analytics to foresee where an organization is most likely to be breached. Risk I/O is used by over 400 businesses, including many in the Fortune 100. Backed by US Ventures Partners, Tugboat Ventures, Costanoa Venture Capital, and Hyde Park Angels, Risk I/O is headquartered in Chicago, IL. For more information, visit http://www.risk.io.